Joanna Hogg, painterly, modernist Brit filmmaker utilizing static frames, uneasy vibes

also, when someone else sees this - post here if you find it reasonable to say the shining is both an oblique but also obvious and slightly “wut?” reference point.

hi!

: )

so, i mean im not sure if im being weird about this but the deployment of *kindly black man as hotel caretaker* was both hilariously obvious and also made me go “wait, what? why?”

I mentioned The Shining in my review, but thought this was kind of creaky tbh. Particularly the kindly old black guy’s eerie flute habit. Would make a good double bill with All Of Us Strangers though.

Creaky or total mess is what I've been circling around. But I quite *enjoyed* that it was trying to do a lot and especially that it was working in the gothic frame to test the deterioration of uppper middle class neurosis and grief, plugging in and reversing the children-as-revenants on guilt ridden parents. Although sometimes it felt like it all landed on the pastiche, with major concerns (death, ghosts) in service of the minor (manners).

It reminded me a bit of my reaction to Jen Calleja's novel Vehicle. I didn't think it was very good, at all really, but I was pleased that it existed and people were doing things in this vein, playing with the possibilities. What's the line from Annie Dillard? "The writer knows his field - what has been done, what could be done, the limits - the way a tennis player knows the court. ANd like that expert, he, too, plays the edges. That is where the exhilaration is. He hits up the edges. In writing, he can push the edges. Beyond this limit, here, the reader must recoil."

I think this film is probably in that latter space, but i'm pleased someone is testing the edges of it.

Still too much Tilda, even if the editing was impressive.

the "two parts Hammer, one part Tales of the Unexpected" headline quote from Graun makes this sound appealing to me but somehow I don't think it will be an accurate summation of a J Hogg movie

yeah, that's incorrect! the performance of Carly-Sophia Davies as the hotel receptionist is worth the admission price alone though!

In a strong month for dogs in movies (the mutts in Fallen Leaves and Anatomy of a Fall are v good too), Tilda’s springer spaniel may be the best.

iirc Kaurismaki was a good director of woofers in the other side of hope as well

have been quietly stewing all afternoon over the level of critical idiocy reflected in that guardian quote, calz.

I haven't seen the movie yet but I thought that either is an absolute clunker of a headline quote or a radical departure for J Hogg, the former being the odds on fav!

Upthread I called it her slightest film, but I think of it a little more kindly now. It's audacious to do the third part of an autobiographical trilogy as a gothic ghost story, and it pays off nicely at the end.

The privilege discussion upthread puts me in mind of Sofia Coppola, who I think has a similarly ambiguous posture toward her privilege and the world she occupies.

Mentions of 'Hammer Horror' are almost always a sign of critical carelessness, especially in the Guardian.

my bf was so infuriated by an interview with tilda swinton's daughter that he now refuses to watch any movies by j hogg

Lol, got a link?

I read a graun interview with HSB and was bristling a fair bit at the smugness and nepo-brat quotient and all the usual shit (private school education, idyllic country house) but lol, despite this I'd still watch a Hogg movie!

This film added up to less than the sum of its parts, other than the aforementioned Carly-Sophia Davies. Maybe it needed more heaving bosoms, if it is indeed "two parts Hammer"?

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Tilda seemed to be cured of her psychotic episode quite sharpish at the conclusion!

I think this was it: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/23/honor-swinton-byrne-interview-souvenir-tilda-joanna-hogg

"“From what I understand, she couldn’t find Julie in these posey professional actresses who were very comfortable in front of a camera. She just said they’re all too pretty. And then she cast me. Which, you know, I took as a compliment,” says Swinton Byrne. She lets out a throaty laugh, wriggles her feet out of a pair of sparkly stilettos and snuggles herself more comfortably into a sofa at the upmarket central London hotel that is the base for her first solo publicity round, for the sequel to that first film."

Yer faither wid be proud

that quote nails it!

idk I like the sass. American actors are reluctant to show it.

Thanks for that link plax, understand your bf's reaction.

This film added up to less than the sum of its parts, other than the aforementioned Carly-Sophia Davies. Maybe it needed more heaving bosoms, if it is indeed "two parts Hammer"?

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Tilda seemed to be cured of her psychotic episode quite sharpish at the conclusion!

Great comment.. Did the film need that malevolent detachment? Is that mode even Hogg's specialty?

right. it’s an interesting decision. i like that she tried it. not sure it worked.